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New Year, New Me...Same Program?!

It's that time of year, you guys all know it. The gym is crowded like a club on half price drink night and you're lucky if you get to bench at all during the week. The masses are adorned with the brightest of yoga-like material and the smell of fresh New Balance trainers and discount Amazon "fitness hoodie" is like a low-hanging cloud over the gym. Those of us who visit the gym 12 months out of the year know that January is impossible, February is complex and March is usually the end of the line for the Resolutioners, but I'd like to submit that there is something we can all learn from them.

It's easy to get wrapped up your own bullshit. Even if you're a successful lifter or competitor, it gets very easy to start believing your own hype. I like to think I stay pretty grounded but this New Year I had to take a step back and it was good for me. Why do people make resolutions and why do they fail? This isn't news at all, but it's so simple the lesson gets forgotten each year; Resolutioners aren't committed. They aren't dedicated to the process, they are just trying to get into a new routine. For some, with the help of kind-hearted Iron Addicts like myself, they can make that adaptation and stick around after winter, but the sad truth is that most won't, because they never intended to in the first place.

Just like the Resolutioner who only works out two months of the year, we fall short too, but we overlook it far too easily. Did you hit all your goals for 2017? 2016? How about the real talk, motherfucker do you even HAVE goals written down for 2018? Just like the Resolutioner, we often fail to make the necessary preparations to be successful because we have adapted to a routine and not to a path to greatness. The only difference between most of us and the Resolutioner is that we keep writing in "Gym" on the daily planner while they erase it mid-March and change it to something else. 

Don't treat January as just another month on the never ending treadmill of "making progress." Take a page out of the Resolutioner's book and make some real goals, get excited and dare to make some effort toward what you're really wanting to accomplish. Remember how bold you had to be to start in the very beginning? Rediscover that, stoke that fire and let 2018 become the year you break out of the routine and start making real progress. 

Believe in yourself! (I know I do!)


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